Benefit agents, such as perfumes, silicones, waxes, flavors, vitamins and fabric softening agents, are expensive and/or generally less effective when employed at high levels in consumer products, for example, personal care compositions, cleaning compositions, and fabric care compositions. As a result, there is a desire to maximize the effectiveness of such benefit agents. One method of achieving such objective is to improve the delivery efficiencies of such benefit agents. Unfortunately, it is difficult to improve the delivery efficiencies of benefit agents as such agents may be lost due to the agents' physical or chemical characteristics, or such agents may be incompatible with other compositional components or the situs that is treated. In an effort to improve such delivery efficiency, benefit agents have been encapsulated. Unfortunately, encapsulated benefit agents leak benefit agent over time, possibly via diffusion. Such leakage can be minimized by increasing the encapsulate's shell strength. However, when an encapsulate's shell strength is increased, benefits such as sustained benefit release with time are compromised as the encapsulate no longer releases sufficient benefit agent in response to moderate pressure stimuli. Thus, what is needed is an encapsulate that exhibits decreased benefit agent leakage, yet which releases benefit agent in response to moderate pressure stimuli.
Here, Applicants recognized that the source of the problem giving rise to shell strength/benefit agent release dilemma was the nature of encapsulate's crosslink density. While not being bound by theory, Applicants believe that as the shell crosslink density increases, the encapsulate's rigidity increases due to a loss of the shell's degrees of freedom and the encapsulate's benefit agent leakage decreases as the pathway through the shell is more tortuous. Thus, Applicant's recognized that, to exhibit low leakage and sustained release, an encapsulate requires a high number of flexible/weak shell cross links. Such an encapsulate can, among other benefits, provide increased wet fabric odor benefits.
Herein, Applicants provide a solution to the aforementioned dilemma.